ArtsEmerson: The World On Stage presents Barton Fink. Barton Fink's life begins to spin out of control when he is lured away from his successful playwriting career in 1940s New York by the allure of being a screenwriter in Hollywood. Shortly after arriving on the West Coast, however, Barton receives a disappointing first assignment: to write for a low-budget wrestling movie. With no real source material and plenty of interruption from the insurance salesman living one room over in the same motel, Barton has a difficult time writing much of anything and must face his shattered vision of Hollywood. The Coen brothers lend a darkly comic and entirely farcical tone to this film about movies and the struggling life of the artist starring John Turturro and John Goodman.